I just bought a house with coal heat. My dad helped me start the furnance but for some reason it went out last night. Any tips on getting it started again ( I had no luck this morning).Also why would it go out right away and how can I keep it going?

Hi Jamie,, the easiest way to start an efm is to use barbeque charcoal,, break it up to small pieces about the size of an olive or the end of your thhumb,, use a piece of crumpled paper under the pieces.. I usually dig out a few handfulls of coal to make a depression to make the fire in. Light the paper, start the fan and let the air blow on the pieces till they are red, the add a handfull of coal on top, then another one and the fire will be going.. I have done the sam thing with smallpieces of wood, about the size of your index finger,, you need to get a HOT fire going, then add the coal in small quantities and let it catch fire before adding more coal..

The boiler or furnace? Needs a timer that runs the stoker every hour or half hour for about a minute or so. this 'keep fire' timer is critical to keep a fire fed and burning untill hot water is needed..

You may want to post the same question further down the home page [board index] on the Manufacterers site for EFM.. and get some additional help there.

You are lucky to have bought a home with an EFM !! Even if it needs some work and a 'tune-up' by an EFM tech.. it is one of the best boilers/furnaces available.

Thanks for your help I will try the suggestion for starting it. Stoker-man I don't know where the timer or auqastat is but I will try to figure it out.Anyone know a reliable repair technician in the Tremont area that can come out and service it and change the settings for me?

I've not had much success with the charcoal myself, maybe because I'm impatient. I have a Van-Wert which is very similar to a EFM. This is pretty much a nearly smokeless startup and the fastest.

Step 1 - If you're married the first step is to make sure the wife knows this a long process.(see steps 3 & 11)

Step 2 - Get some scrap 2x4 or softer wood that burns easily. You can use hardwood but you have to be careful. If the pieces don't fully burn they can get into the mechanism and possibly break something. Cut two 5 inch pieces off the 2x4 and split them with an axe into as many small pieces as you can. You want pieces that pretty small, you should be able to get about 15-20 pieces out of each 2x4.

Step 3 - Now that the dangerous stuff is out of the way open a beer and drink it.

Step 4 - Clean the fire pot out as much as possible.

Step 5 - Crumple up about 3 pieces of newspaper and put them in the pot.

Step 6 - Sort out the smallest pieces of wood and place them on to of the newspaper pushing down on the paper.

Step 7 - Light the paper, you can usually just throw a couple of lit matches in.

Step 8 - Close the fire pot door and wait a few minutes. Once the fire is burning for about a minute put the rest of the wood on and wait another two minutes. If you go too fast through this part the chances of getting a lot of smoke in the house become greater and it possibly won't light so be patient. You need a good fire going.

Step 9 - Throw about two coffee cans of coal on it and turn the furnace on if you're going to get any smoke in the house this will be the point. you can actually throw a lot of coal on at this point but it prevents smoke if you do it slowly.

Step 10 - Wait about a minute, turn the furnace off then throw about 3 or 4 coffee cans full of coal on (you can put as much as you want on). You want to completely cover the existing fire.

Step 11 - Turn the furnace back on, if you're beer is empty at this point get another beer. This is where it gets interesting .

Step 12 - The fire will appear to be out but you should here crackling, within a minute at the most you'll begin to see small blue wisps of blue flame shooting up through the coal bed. These wisps can be pretty cool to watch. They can get very high and narrow and randomly shoot up through the bed.

Step 13 - Once you get the fire going for 5 or ten minutes if you let it go you'll have an enormous bed of burning coal. You might want to turn the stoker part off at this point especially in the summer/fall/spring to let the water come up to temp. You can actually get it rolling enough that the temps will shoot up so high that it won't come back on for very long time and go out again.

Step 14 - If you turn the furnace off STOP drinking beer, as you will probably forget to turn the furnace back on in hour.

Note that EFM might not recommend lighting it with wood because as previously state if the pieces don't burn they can break something. The key is to use a soft wood like pine in 2x4's. Hardwood or plywood scraps should not be used. If you have to use hardwood let the fire burn longer before adding the coal. Use this advice at your own risk.